"Insley laughed a little, but he let Mis' Sykes, that loves new things and new people, bring him to our next evening meeting in the church parlors, and he'd been back several times, not saying much, but just getting acquainted. And that rainy night, when the men met with us to talk over some money raising for Sodality, we'd asked him to come over too. We all liked him. He had a kind of a used-to-things way, and you felt like you'd always known him or, for the time you hadn't, that you'd both missed something out; and he had a nice look too, a look that seemed to be saying 'good morning' and to be beginning a fine, new day--the best day yet. "He'd set there kind of broodin' the most of that evening, drinking whatever anybody brought him, but not putting his mind to it so very much; but it was a bright broodin', an' one that made you think of something that's going to open and not just of something that's shut up. You can brood both ways, but the effect is as different as a bud from a core. "'Speakin' of money raisin' for Sodality,' says Silas Sykes, kind of pretend hearty and pretend casual, like he does, 'why don't Sodality make some money off'n the Fourth of July? Everybody else is.' ("Sodality always speaks of itself and of the Cemetery real intimate, without the _the_, an' everybody's got to doing it.) "Us ladies all set still and kept still. The Fourth of July, that was less than a week off, was a sore point with us, being we'd wanted a celebration that would _be_ a celebration, and not merely a money-raiser for the town. "'Oh, I say canvass, house to house,' says Timothy. 'Folks would give you a dime to get you off'n the front porch that wouldn't come out to a dime entertainment, never.' "'Why not ask them that's got Dead in their own families, to pay out for 'em, an' leave them alone that's got livin' mouths to feed?' says Threat Hubbelthwait, querulous. Threat ain't no relations but his wife, and he claims to have no Dead of his own. I always say they must be either living or dead, or else where's Threat come in? But he won't admit it. "'What you raisin' money for anyhow?' asks Eppleby Holcomb, quiet. Eppleby always keeps still a long time, and then lets out something vital. "As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand, Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt, we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we kept Sodality real alive. "'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals to pay for last year. Or I might say, one an' a half, one corpse contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'